Those who have seen Lucian Goian on the field know how serious the Romanian is when he takes control of the ball. But off the field, he is a fun-loving, jovial gentleman. As his team’s coach Jorge Costa and team-mate Amrinder Singh spoke to the scribes at the ISL media day on Monday, Goian made it a point to crack jokes and even take pictures.

“Sometimes, you have to disconnect. You cannot be serious all the time,” the Romanian said. But a few moments later, he also made it clear that when on field, every player needs to give his 100 per cent.

The only foreign player to be retained by Mumbai City FC this season, Goian also admitted that the side needs to learn from last season’s mistakes. “I don’t know what went wrong (last year) but something was missing,” he said.

Talking about the chances this year, the Romanian said: “This is my third season, but the team was changing every season. We have some players from last season and we would like to do good things. We have to learn from the mistakes. We are hoping the foreigners and new players to adapt to the team environment.”

Under coach Alexandre Guimaraes, the Mumbai outfit struggled last season, but this time, with a new coach around, will things be any better?

“We have to wait for the first game,” he said. “Every good coach asks you to give 100 per cent. We are professional, we have to respect what the coaches say and follow accordingly,” he said.

He also admitted that his dream is to win the trophy.

“It is time to bring the trophy to Mumbai. This is our and our fans’ dream. We had a good pre-season (outing). We are a new team, but we are a good family and I hope to be ready for the first game against Jamshedhpur,” he said.

Coach Costa also felt that the team still has a lot of work to do and will initially aim to reach the playoffs.

“The pre-season was good. We played four games and won three and drew one (in Thailand). We are far from perfection and have a lot of work to do. We have 9-10 days for the first game and hoping that we can give a good response in the first game,” he said. “We are on the right way to do very good things,” Costa added.

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